January 2023
Transport Infrastructure and Local Economy: Evidence from the Gujarat Rural Roads Project
By Jingyu Gao, Yue Li, and Abhinav Narayanan*
This paper estimates the effects of a statewide rural roads project in Gujarat, India, on three aspects of the local economy: output, employment, and agricultural trade.
READ MOREJuly 2022
Infrastructure Quality and Trade Liberalization
By Jang Ping Thia* and Anne Ong Lopez†
It is difficult to establish the impact infrastructure has on trade balances due to confounding factors. Our empirical approach leverages on episodes of trade liberalization, interacting such episodes with infrastructure.
READ MOREJune 2021
Do Power Outages Hurt Export Performance? Evidence From a Firm-Level Survey
By Abhijit Sen Gupta* and Prakash Singh†
Power outages reduce the competitiveness of firms by increasing the cost of production and engendering loss of output, thereby making firms less likely to survive external competition.
READ MOREDecember 2020
Increasingly Networked Lenders and Their Impact on Lending Spreads
By Jingyu Gao, Xinyu Kong and Jang Ping Thia
A large fraction of syndicated loans are now syndicated by top lenders. Top lenders have become more networked than smaller ones. Spreads of top lenders, however, have become persistently lower than those of small lenders. We provide evidence that top lenders have lower costs, but these translate to profitability rather than lower spreads.
READ MOREAugust 2020
Hydropower Modernization Needs in Asia
By David Morgado, Nicholas Troja, Amina Kadyrzhanova and David Samuel*
Hydropower has and continues to make an essential contribution to increasing energy access, boosting prosperity and meeting climate targets. In 2019, hydropower accounted for nearly half of the global renewable energy capacity with just over 1,300 gigawatts(GW) and approximately 16 percent of global electricity generation.
READ MOREJune 2020
Impact of Infrastructure Investment on Developed and Developing Economies
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Economic Change and Restructuring. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-020-09287-4
By Xuehui Han, Jiaqi Su and Jang Ping Thia
This paper uses two longitudinal datasets—one with more limited coverage from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and another constructed using general government gross fixed capital formation—to test for the relative effects of infrastructure versus non-infrastructure investment on output per worker, between developed and developing economies. The paper presents evidence that increasing infrastructure per worker has a larger relative impact on developing economies. This also implies that the share of gross capital formation devoted to infrastructure should be higher in developing economies.
READ MOREFebruary 2020
Benchmarking Infrastructure Costs: A Case of Road and Water Basket of Locally-Obtained Commodities (BLOC)
By AIIB*, Centre for Comparative Construction Research (Bond University) and The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)
Although understanding drivers of infrastructure cost is an important part of cost management, data on costs are hard to obtain. Most importantly, cross-country comparisons of infrastructure costs are difficult to collect due to heterogeneity in infrastructure types and differences in country contexts. By standardizing input quantities and qualities of a road and a water infrastructure as well as accounting for currency variations, this paper documents a methodology to create a cross- city measure of infrastructure costs. Based on this benchmarking methodology, the derived cost differentials between pilot cities are attributable to factors other than quality, quantity, and the exchange rate.
READ MOREFebruary 2020
Protectionism and Trade in Renewable Energy Infrastructure
By Anne Ong Lopez
International trade in renewable energy infrastructure is essential for countries to meet their development and environmental objectives such as the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper explores the role of protectionism in renewable energy. Using detailed product-level data on imports, tariff and non-tariff measures, it presents evidence that burdensome measures negatively impact trade flows in this infrastructure. Results further suggest that these measures may have heterogenous impact on exporting countries depending on their level of development. This points to the need to lower costs to support renewable energy development.
READ MOREOctober 2019
Deficits and Crowding Out Through Private Loan Spreads
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qref.2020.01.009
By Jang Ping Thia
Post crisis, bank loan spreads increased and have remained elevated despite central bank actions, low LIBOR rates and observed Treasury yields. Using large syndicated loan dataset, this paper estimates that a one percentage point to GDP increase in government deficits increases spreads by around nine basis points on average. This is consistent with partial crowding out. Weaker country risk ratings, larger loan size also increase spreads. Finally, the paper provides evidence that US deficit spending results in a crowding out of around one-half in loan markets and have some crowding out of loans in other markets.
READ MOREApril 2018
Bank Lending—What Has Changed Post-Crisis?
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Economics and Finance. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12197-018-9441-2
By Jang Ping Thia
Using syndicated loan data, this paper finds that loan spreads have increased and have remained elevated post-2009. Regressions, controlling for currency fixed effects, loan types, loan sizes, number of participating banks and tenors confirm the higher spreads post-2009. Further analysis reveals that the average number of banks per syndication increased for developed economies but decreased for emerging economies. This is explained by the higher market shares of non-Japanese Asian banks in developing economies post-crisis, but with lower syndication intensity. Consistent with the capital shock hypothesis, Western and Japanese banks intensify the degree of syndication post-crisis, but other Asian banks do not. The lower syndication intensity suggests that market efficiency has declined for developing economies. Syndication should be further encouraged to reduce spreads.
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